Labour Law

Employment

— Employment or job contract — Sick company with bleak financial condition and having no rule or scheme for compassionate appointment — Widows/dependants of its workers who had died in harness, demanding employment and the Company agreeing to consider the same — However, the Company appointing them rather as contractors and after some time (ten years in this case) discontinuing that arrangement — Agreements under which such appointments were made clearly indicating the cost of the contract, the nature of work, the time allowed and the number of persons to be engaged for carrying out the job contract work — In such circumstances and in the absence of any material to suggest otherwise, the said contracts, held, were not contracts of employment but job contracts — Hence, termination thereof did not involve retrenchment nor could the said persons be said to be workmen — High Court erred in granting relief on the assumption that the termination of the said contracts amounted to retrenchment without complying with S. 6-N, U.P. Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, (2006) 5 SCC 523